Genuine Smile
by Yidkirkin
Summary: Romario was once a member of the Golden Trio, a lifetime and a war ago. The fight against the Millefiore was lost in his dimension, so when Verde entrusts him with a way to change that, he takes it. But at the same time, the young Vongola Tenth has defeated Byakuran once and for all. Now Romario has to learn how to live in a new world where his revenge isn't needed.


**Genuine Smile**

*so in canon the Mafia School exists and is presumably in Italy –everyone has their own version, but I hc it being in Rome as a sort of central place/neutral zone, and that its full name is_ Scuola Italiana di Armonia _(Italian School of Harmony). But there are crime families and flame actives all over the world, so I also headcanon that there's a 'Mafia School' in many places. For the Isles, it would be _Scoil Irish Ar Armóin A _(Irish School of Harmony) in Irish Gaelic, going off of the Irish Mob. _La Scuola _and _An Scoil _for short.

p.s. i use google translate please be kind to me

SPOILERS

Recently turned twenty five years old, Romario was very quickly running out of options.

He ducked as best he could to try and avoid the blasts of Storm flames flying over his head, and scrambled around in the dirt to find the escape route that he had been assured was there if he was in need of it. He could hear his pursuers getting closer, the oppressive weight of Mist flames saturating the area making it difficult for him to concentrate and move while trying to pump his aspect out to the fullest. He finally managed to make a bit of blue flicker in his vision –and while the flame use would draw the trackers to him like moths to a light, Romario got the clarity he needed and at last found the hatch that would be his last chance.

He took a deep breath just before opening the thing, sending a silent thanks to his comrades for what he was about to do, and then saturated the area in his own flames, stunning whatever Mist users were tracking him for a moment. Then he concentrated, flung open the hatch, and made the area within 50 ft of him slow down, from the bodies of his pursuers to the very dust particles in the air; he didn't stick around to see those chasing him start to asphyxiate.

As he ran down the underground tunnel he extracted the phone that Gamma had given him, and once he no longer detected any flames around he continued to run but began dialling anyone he could think of. Romario got further and further from the danger but kept hearing static as an answer, and he eventually resorted to calling not only his superiors and comrades from this inescapable war, but those from his life before he was Romario, from before the whole world went to hell.

By the time he arrived at the bunker, he was no longer able to manifest his flames and his head felt like a hammer had been taken to it several times. The phone was clutched tight in his hand, and white noise emanated from the receiver, the last call he could make failed –the last person he could go to wasn't answering.

Romario stumbled to the tiny cot and sat down heavily, his stomach churning. He nearly vomited all over the pillow but suppressed it at the last second –he teetered on the edge of sleep, _'The final sleep_,' he thought blearily to himself, _'That would be nice right about now_.' But something stopped him; maybe it was the knowledge that he was the only member of his squad to escape, maybe it was the fact that an easy out after nearly two weeks on the run in enemy territory would be the worst defeat imaginable. Whatever it was, Romario's eyes were drawn to the only other item in the room of worth, and he struggled to stand so that he could get to it.

The gun seemed innocuous and typical, completely black and sitting on a pile of papers like the previous owner had set it aside to check something and then never picked it up again. He held it gingerly, having only learned how to use one out of necessity as opposed to interest, and when he tilted it to the side he caught sight of the insignia he was looking for embossed on the handle.

Romario felt, in that moment... resigned to it, the duty he never saw himself carrying out but now he suspected that he was the only one left who could. Had the raid those two weeks ago not gone so wrong (so well), had the Varia not fallen at the same time and plunged the Vongola into chaos, had Verde not entrusted his team with this very mission so many weeks ago as a final failsafe –Romario wouldn't be here right now. There might have been a chance that things wouldn't progress so far, if only the whole situation hadn't gone so bad so quickly. If only they had planned a bit more.

But he _was_ here, and the gun in his hands was loaded. He had grown used to Verde over the course of this war and trusted his genius, and after the man's death it was only right that he continued to trust in it. So when he placed the muzzle just below his sternum he didn't feel afraid. That man was brilliant, with a mind unparalleled in any field he chose to focus on, and so while he knew that it would hurt, Romario was not afraid of what was to come. The rings on his fingers –one a replica, the other the real thing –they both flared as he poured his Dying Will into them, and when he pulled the trigger he didn't live long enough to feel the shockwaves of his world being saved.

Vvv

_It hadn't always been so hopeless. The world hadn't always been in the middle of a worldwide conflict between forces that had used to hide in the shadows. Romario hadn't always been Romario._

_When Ron was seventeen, he was on the run with his two best friends and it had felt like the world was ending back then, too. His family was in hiding, the school was overrun with Death Eaters, and the longer he wore that __**fucking**_ _**locket**_ _the more angry and afraid he felt. He and Hermione and Harry spent their days crammed inside that tent with nothing to do but listen to the radio and wait for something to happen, and the longer they went without contact from the Order the more scared and hopeless they got. It got more and more difficult to sleep through the night, not only when they had to wear the locket, and eventually all of them were jumping at their own shadows._

_Ron had been the one to snap first. And that fight had been the thing that made it all crumble to pieces._

_When he left, Ron had intended to go home –and then an hour later, he had wanted to head straight back to his friends. But Snatchers were everywhere, damn collaborating bastards, and when he walked straight into a den of them he hadn't __**thought**_ _about getting back to Hermione and Harry then. He had only wanted to lead them away, and stop them from finding that tent._

_Ron had never been great at Apparation, anyone who knew him could tell you that. But he managed to outrun them for at least a little while, before he realized that they had hit him with a tracking spell and that no matter where he went, they would be able to find him._

_The small clearing he ended up in wasn't ideal, but at the very least Ron could try and curse them, try to stop even one before he apparated away again. And he did manage that, at least the once. And then he had splinched and ended up in the backyard of some estate, a ten year old kid in front of him, Snatchers behind and half his foot missing._

'_Get out of here!' he shouted at the kid, who, to his credit, had run away without thinking twice._

_The only thing worse than splinching away his foot was that brain thing in his fifth year, and that was all Ron could think as the three Snatchers appeared out of the trees. Then he was glad that the kid had escaped –he didn't think he could handle it if some innocent muggle kid was dragged into this because of his mistakes. And then he was screaming, because the Cruciatus hurt, but having it aimed at his open wound was a new tier of excruciating-_

_Bang! Bang! Bang!_

_The pain stopped. Ron fell flat on his back, gasping and sobbing and waiting for that horrible green light to hit him, or worse, get dragged off to wherever Death Eaters took people they wanted to keep __**alive**_ _for awhile longer. But none of that happened._

_Instead, there was an orange light, and a hand on his forehead, and then nothing._

_Ron had awoken in the medical room of the Cavallone's Welsh estate not a week later, his foot bandaged and his clothes changed for hospital garb, and a strange fuzziness to what he could recall from before. Where had Harry and Hermione been all those apparations ago? Would they still be there if he could remember at all? Why had he left like that? Why was he such a piece of trash, that he would abandon his friends, his two best friends in the whole world when they needed him most, when __**he**_ _needed __**them**_-

_He had passed out again midst his breakdown, and when he awoke once more it was to that same blond kid from before and a much older man with a similar face to the boy, both of whom were sitting at a nearby table and speaking quietly. It was the kid who saw him first, and then fell out of his chair in his haste to get to him._

_The boy was Dino, and his father Constantino, and it was with an odd seriousness to his face that the older man thanked Ron for getting his son to safety. When Ron tried to protest that he was the one to put Dino in danger in the first place, Constantino scoffed and brushed the point away –said something about not blaming kids, about being welcome in the family now, and then when he told Ron to sleep, Ron had obeyed. It was only a few more days and meetings later that Ron could stay awake long enough to ask for an explanation, for he had tried to use his wand once when he woke up alone, and to his shock and horror nothing had come of it._

_Constantino answered his questions dutifully, without his young son there to interrupt, and thereby introduced him into the Italian Underworld. Ron had learned that the traumatic and emotional experience of the torture and the lost body part, coupled with suddenly appearing in a Flame saturated environment with a strong Sky near him –well, he had Activated, and within a day his flames had consumed his magic and he was no longer a wizard. 'There can only be one way to use the soul,' Constantino told him, 'It's why wizards and flame users don't cross paths very much, except in odd circumstances like this. Flames are harder to activate because __**anyone**__ can do it, you don't have to be born with it like magic, but that also means that if a wizard __**does**__ manage it...'_

_Ron took it maybe not as well as he might have hoped, and that was before he was told that he and Dino were a few degrees away from something called 'harmonization', which, well, sure sounded to him like some sort of life-binding magic. For a time his health deteriorated rapidly, until Dino managed to worm his way back into visiting him and snapped him out of it. The kid was only ten, and Ron was new to this Flame thing, but even he could tell that Dino was something special –the kid doggedly tried to cheer him up even when the logic in Ron's head and the instinct in his gut were swerving one way and another. As days turned into weeks and Ron started to ask about a prosthetic for his foot, Constantino offered him a place to stay, and Ron... he accepted._

_Some might call it callous, but the way he saw it, he had betrayed Harry and Hermione. There was no way he would be able to track them down again this long after he left, let alone hope to be forgiven for how he acted, what he had __**said**_. _And Constantino had saved his life, had killed the Snatchers without a thought after Dino had gone running from the garden, and Ron had to repay that. And if that meant staying with the Cavallone and protecting Dino at least until the war was over, then he would do it._

_Constantino warned him about the fact that if he stuck around, he would likely tie himself to Dino –Ron, at the time, hadn't understood exactly what that meant. He was under the impression that he could control the impulse with just his logic, and that his emotions and the flames themselves didn't hold any sway; that had been very, very wrong._

_He didn't hear much from magical Britain, when they went back to Italy; their stay in the Welsh estate a brief thing kept for longer business ventures. He tried, but Harry and Hermione were under the radar, and Lee's radio had to be tuned into with magic, and with the war intensifying the Daily Prophet had stopped running, so even the small magic store in Naples where the Cavallone were based couldn't get news. And Romario was –he was __**busy**_, _busier than he'd ever been in his life. With Dino the heir of the family, Romario had to learn how to stand again with his new prosthetic, had to use his flames as quickly and efficiently as possible, had to learn the ins and outs of being a bodyguard, of being a part of a Famiglia, of handling a gun. And then there was Dino, who was like the little brother he'd never had –Ginny had always looked up to Fred and George and Charlie more –but he was __**clumsy**_ _and a __**Sky**__ and so before he knew it, months had flown by and when the local wizards told him the war was over he... didn't react._

_He didn't go back, either. Not then, it wasn't the right time, he told himself. Dino needed him, Constantino was trusting him more, and they would all be so busy with the trials and the rebuilding, and how could he go waltzing back in after he had missed so much? After he had left them in the first place?_

_It was cowardly, but Ron wasn't above that. When he and Dino Harmonized, it was a relief, in a way –he had a concrete reason to stay. He was with the Cavallone five long, difficult, but good years. And he was happy._

_Then the Gesso family forcefully merged with the Giglio Nero and the new Millefiore plunged the world into a state of terror, quickly eradicating their enemies with ruthless efficiency until only those closest to the Vongola were left._

_Romario had seen Constantino gunned down the day Dino turned fifteen, and he hadn't been able to save him. Constantino's Guardians were taken in, along with the rest of the Cavallone, by the Vongola Army, and they soon made themselves useful. Dino was placed under Reborn's tutelage and Romario was one of many to learn from Colonello, pushing his Flames as far as they could go while the rest of the world crumbled. When he was asked, Romario went into civilian areas and hunted down Millefiore spies, and when he was needed, he infiltrated smaller Millefiore bases and helped take them down from the bottom up. _

_Reborn went missing, and so the Vongola Tenth placed Dino in hiding along with the other children of the various allied families, and Romario was needed in the fighting and so he didn't go with him. When Colonello was killed and he had recovered from his injuries, he was moved onto a team underneath Verde, not because he was qualified, but because there was no one left to choose. Those last eight weeks hadn't been easy by any stretch but neither had they been horrible; Verde had concocted several plans as failsafes in case there was a point where the war couldn't be won, and Romario's squad had been assigned the task of stealing one of the Mare rings from the Millefiore base._

_It had gone off without a hitch, and Romario had been tasked to carry it since he was the only Rain present –then Valdez had sensed the Varia falling, the shock made them slip up, and Romario had only gotten away by suppressing his flames until he had come close to death. The replica Vongola Rain Ring had ached from its place on his other hand, locked in a struggle with the Mare ring Romario was determined to bring to Verde's bunker. Those two weeks were the worst of his life even compared to the months he had been on the run with Harry and Hermione, because now he was alone in a place crawling with enemies and he didn't have any allies to aide him. He had no way of finding out what was going on beyond Sicily's shores, and had been running blind except for the vague location in his mind of the emergency bunker near Palermo._

_Dino hadn't answered when he called, Verde hadn't answered, Giannini hadn't answered. The calls to CEDEF had rung the longest, the tenth generation was underground, the Cavallone had long since been picked off. Romario had tried his friends; Feng Xu from the Triads, Aodhán in London, the Martello heir Antoni, then any of his numerous informants near Rome –and nothing had gone through. Finally he had tried to call Hermione, his father, Harry –but there had been nothing but silence. Recently turned twenty five years old, Romario had finally run out of options and had no one left to turn to; when the bullet infused with Verde's flames hit his chest, collided with the flames generated by the Mare and Vongola rings, he knew it was the best, and only road he could take._

_When the Vongola Ring sent him through time, the Arcobaleno's power moved his position, and the Mare ring flung him into a dimension that would allow him to warn some different Vongola of the danger, he didn't expect the shockwaves that pulsed through the air. When his body fell back through a veil, he didn't know that one Sawada Tsunayoshi a few dimensions over had just defeated Byakuran and had saved every other dimension the Millefiore leader had affected. When Romario woke up only to be bombarded by memories of that other reality –he wouldn't be able to go back no matter what he did._

Vvv


End file.
